Category Archives: Art

Every day, after I hesitantly press the coded “PUBLISH” button on my WordPress’ dashboard, I wait for the website’s quirky exclamations to appear on my screen:

Right on! Bonanza!

Bingo! Superb! Fab!

At least half a year ago, I stopped noting each post’s number; and as of recently, I’ve also lost my addiction to the stats columns. It’s not that I’m indifferent toward my readership, in any way: No sir! I just don’t have any time in the day to check my numbers as religiously as the newbie-blogger me used to do, a mere year ago. So: I just collect the praises.

Besides, even if I have checked the stats, wake me up in the morn’ — and I won’t remember a thing about them. Instead, I could tell you plenty about the remote neighborhoods of LA-LA for whose visit I’ve had to borrow Superman’s cape, so that I would beat the traffic and be on time, along with all the other pros. For a while, in the hours of the next day, I can recall the hustle of the previous one: the projects that I’ve pursued, the people who have delighted me; the coffee shops at which I published in between my commitments; the anxieties, the victories; the tiny defeats and inspirations. But by the end of the week, the memory gives way to the nearest ones — of mostly yesterday.

Awesome!

Truth be told, I don’t even recall what I’ve written just two days ago. Therein must lie the cathartic charm of art: For once the written word leaves my laptop and leaps into the mysterious vortex of the internet, I have already lived it out completely. I’ve let it go, you see, with more grace than I’ve ever practiced in any of my relationships.

And in the entire 351-day history of my blogging, I’ve returned to stories — to rewrite their endings or to keep telling them — in all of five times. I just don’t do that, I guess: Once I hit “PUBLISH”, the story gains a life of its own; and I allow for its destiny to determine where in the world it flies and whom in the world it reaches:

Magical!

Looking back on the year of daily blogging, I myself must admit that I had absolutely no idea as to what this writing adventure would turn out to be. First, there would be the technical challenges of course: Learning the sites, studying the patterns and manners of other bloggers, upgrading my own computer, and eventually narrowing down my art’s topic — while in the process of doing it.

But those, I immediately saw as the perfect excuses to learn: To step out of the fearful pattern of my mind and to submit myself — to change. In the end, as even back then I already knew, it would be rewarding. And I was right: It has been. And it deserves praise.

The personal challenges that came with my now spoken — better yet, written — desire to have a public persona, I could NOT have foreseen. When at first, the opinions of readers and friends began flooding in, I was thrilled. But it wouldn’t be too long before I began hearing criticisms and watching how my friendships started redefining themselves. At first, I geared-up with my anti-hating campaigns and googled other artists opinions on the matter. But then, eventually, the angst ran out.

And it hasn’t been a surprising discovery that I have never complained about having to publish on any given day. What I’ve been practicing — is a privilege to live in art; and the discipline of its pursuit has never gotten in my way.

And speaking of discipline: This year, I have discovered it to be THE grace of all other working artists. Those who succeed the most, work the most (and, therefore, fail the most, too).

And actually, no matter the hustles of each day, discipline indeed turns out to be my saving grace: It gives me a reason to be, despite the failures.

Marvelous!

So, it’s been one challenging year, because its every day I’ve spent creating. And after all that shedding — the mourning, the flailing, the pleading, the lashing out; the learning, the changing; the growth; the acceptance — I am proud to find myself in a place of surrender. Because no matter all other circumstances, I do this — because I must. Because to do anything else — would be dishonest.

And so I allow for the world to happen, while I continue to happen — to it.

True: Sometimes, it flies out of her, like a butterfly trapped in between the two tiny palms of a kiddo who hasn’t lived for long enough to realize the fragility of her dreams, yet.

“You can’t do that to butterflies, little one! They break their wings.”

But other times, she must cradle the cocoons of her beginnings, checking up on them, every few breaths: Are they ready for the magical reveal of their births yet? Can they leap out at the world that didn’t even suspect how much it needed them? On harder days of creation, the luxury of time begins to test her patience, and it challenges her — to start. To just: Start.

Because starting — takes a courageous flight of fancy. And only she knows — because she has asked for her creator to allow and to forgive her the hubris to make things happen — only she knows when her beginnings can no longer wait to happen.

The days, the moments, the creations that begin easily — are often easier to also take for granted. And they can’t really be trusted, actually. But the easy creations lighten the step and color the world with more flattering palettes of her imagination. And even though, she may not remember the achievement of that day, she gets the privilege of spending it — while half dreaming: Still the little girl, chasing butterflies, and trapping them in between her tiny palms.

Gratitude comes easy on those days of nearly no struggle. And she breathes through the misty sensation in her eyes: After all, her compassion has not expired yet! And despite all the losses, it continues to give back.

On luckier days, life permits for such illusions to last: That people are good. That art — matters. That beauty — is a common addiction of all humankind. And that perhaps (please, please, let her have this “perhaps”!) we all speak a common language which may be determined by our self-serving needs — but that those needs belong to LOVE. Alas! How marvelous — are those days!

And she learns to savor them! The days of easier creation — of more graceful survival, when the whole world somehow happens to accommodate for her dreams — those days she must savor for the future. Because in that future, as she has grown to accept (once she’s grown up and out of certain dreams), there will be days of hardship. She knows that. No, not just the hardships of life itself: Those, she has by now learned to forgive. After all, they have taught her her own humanity. They have connected all the capillaries between the organs of her empathy and inspirations. And she understands it all so much better — after the days of hard life.

But the hardships of persevering through life for long enough to get to the next easier moment — that task can only be done by eluding herself. So, she suspends the memories of better days. Easier days of creation. She stretches them out, makes them last. (They taste like soft caramel or bits of saltwater taffy.) She rides them out to exhaustion and prays — oh, how she prays! — that they will bring her to the next beginning.

Then, there are days, seemingly mellow, but that do not grant her easy beginnings. On those days, she must work. She must earn the first sentences to her dreams and earn her beginnings. She may go looking for inspiration, in other people’s art. And sometimes, that works just fine: Like a match to a dry wick, other art sets her imagination on fire. All it takes is a glimpse of a tail of that one fleeting dream. It takes a mere crumb of someone else’s creation to set off the memory and the inspiration — follows. Just a whisper of that common language! A whiff of the unproved metaphysical science that it’s all one. We — are one. (Is that silly?)

And when the art of others does not start another flame, then she must have the courage to begin. Just simply — begin! It’s mechanical, then: a memorized choreography of fingers upon the keyboard, the sense memory of the tired fingers clutching a pen. On those days, she merely shows up — and she must accept that it would be enough, on just those days.

Because if she doesn’t show up, then she may as well consider herself defeated: Yes, by the struggles of life and the skepticism of those who do NOT have the courage to dream. To start. To begin.

The courage to remain the children they once were, also chasing butterflies and ice-cream men; sucking on icicles in the winter and building castles under the watch of the giant eye of the sun.

The day when she stops beginning — she will consider herself a failure. But until then, she must continue to begin.

Sucked into the 400-page vortex of my soon-to-be purchased new book, I hadn’t payed any attention to the proceedings at my local Barnes and Noble, while I waited for my turn, in line. But it’s not like I harbored any high expectations from this impulsive detour I’ve taken on my way home, at the height of the holiday shopping season.

First, I had to get through the parking lot of the main boulevard leading to this shopping mall. Not a problem, I thought. I could call the damn store — and put my item on hold; then trip out on my packing list, while sitting in traffic.

Then, there was the Korean owner of a dry cleaners who appeared on the brink of going postal from the absence of a Merchant Teller at my Chase. I tried to save the day:

“Would you like to go ahead of me?” I sheepishly offered. (“That’s some holiday magic for you, woman!” I thought while staring at the corrugated surface of her forehead. She wasn’t sure about me.)

She took my offer. Didn’t say thank you.

“You’re welcome,” I shrugged.

Instead of leaving the parking lot and joining the caravan of smoggy vehicles and their annoyed drivers, I left my ride at Chase and walked over to the Barnes and Noble. Nothing like getting towed for the holidays, but my current grasp on sanity was a lot more important.

And normally, I would have to shoot down some sarcastic commentary in my my own head, in order to enjoy the experience of having way too many choices and holiday inspired displays — at any store. But when it came to bookstores, I wouldn’t care if the sales people were promoting their merchandise in the nude.

(Come to think of it, I would actually prefer it that way:

“Written on the Body — in hardback edition!”

“The Breast — at 15% percent off! 30% — for members only!”

I could live with that, I think.)

Now, there would be a disheartening moment I could already foresee through the window, from outside: A display of Valentine’s Day themed gadgets, Nook covers and writing supplies.

“Nope! Not at all weird!” I talked myself out of succumbing to my traditionally sarcastic mindset.

(At least, in New York, I could walk away from it all. Take a different route. Go to a different branch. Get off a packed subway car — and wait for the next train. In this city, avoiding crowds also entailed avoiding their vehicles: And those usually took up much more space!)

But look at how rad I was being: Smiling at other pedestrians, communicating with the parking attendants and security guards! Keeping my cool while riding the escalator behind a woman who blocked my — and everyone else’s — way with her shopping bags!

“She’s just being generous!” I talked my head out of a looming fit.

The three-level store opened in front of me in all of its giant-windowed glory. Despite the chilly temperatures, the sunshine lit up the dust bunnies suspended in the columns of light. They were sparkling.

“Did someone butcher Tinker Bell, on the third floor?” that one got away from me. I wasn’t even being flippant. Just funny, in my dark Russian way. I smiled. Tinker Bell: Butchered. Funny.

The end tail of the check-out line reached me as soon as I passed through those security towers that shortened my lifespan every single time they went off.

“Is this the line…?” I asked a lanky young man reading, by the look of it, some poetry.

“For the check-out?” he finished my sentence. “Yes.”

No worries. I could do that. That’s all good. Armed with a discounted copy of the Steve Jobs’ biography, I determinedly began losing track of time.

“Could we get more cashiers behind this register?!” was the first thing that brought me back from my trip.

It was a woman’s voice. I turned around.

She was of a dignified age, with short hair bleached to the shade of being invisible. What ever was exposed of her chest and arms was covered with age spots. Her hands were manicured and clasping a Louis Vuitton wallet. The woman was bejeweled so heavily, I could study her for the duration of my remaining time in that line: A gold and diamond wedding ring, three other diamond rings on the other hand. The Love Cartier bracelet (a.k.a. the Chastity Belt for America’s feminists). A few tangled diamond tennis bracelets. And all this — before I had a chance to study to her neck.

But it’s her face that deserved a double take. Her lips, actually. She was pressing them together after uttering her customer complaint and viciously staring at the skinny child manning the Nook counter, baffled by her request. I briefly entertained a thought about the origins of her smile: Was that the smile that earned her the family jewels now weighing down her slightly trembling hands? Or were they a consequence of it?

Sensing my mind venturing out into its jaded ideas on this woman’s marriage, I immediately reined it in, and focused on the smirking face on the cover of my book.

There is a split, you see, in the mind of an immigrant: ME — in US; then ME — outside of THEM (who are US, some of the time). Or, is it a head trip of an artist straining her empathy against the people she means to portray well?

As far as I felt, I was still a fucking nobody: commuting to my graduate classes six out of seven days a week, on a 45-minute subway ride from the Bronx.

Sure, as any not-too-lame looking chick, I tried to upgrade my style with an occasional ten-dollar purchase from the H&M on Broadway and 34th. And I had even managed to go out with a few finance guys from Wall Street and realized they were no more sophisticated than my 20-year-old ass. But despite my now impressive expertise of the Island’s neighborhoods and demographics, my favorite shops to browse and windows to shop (only the ones where I was least harassed by salesgirls) — I was hardly a New Yorker yet.

Shit! I didn’t even know any good places to eat! Despite the 50/50 scholarship, the pleasure of having a graduate degree — forty five grand later — was leaving my ass seriously broke. For one, I could never join my classmates to their lunch outings. And because of my immigrant pride, when shooting down their invites, I would give them reasons related to my studious nature (and not because I was eating beans out of a can, in an unheated basement apartment, every night). So, for the entire twelve hour day spent on the Island, in between classes, I would have to last on a pitiful, homemade sandwich made out of a single slice of pumpernickel bread and a veggie burger, glued together with a thin spread of margarine and then cut in half. The meal was so embarrassing, I would do my best to chomp it down alone, in the staircase of a school wing unlikely to be visited by my classmates; or, if I was getting the shakes — inside a bathroom stall.

And this was with my two shitty, part-time jobs accounted for!

And because my education was costing me an arm and a leg — and possibly my sanity and longevity, in the end — boy! did I look forward to the end of every semester. Most of my colleagues would leave for their wholesome looking families — in Connecticut or wherever else purebred Americans had their happy childhoods — and there, I imagined, they sat around on their white-fenced porches and threw tennis balls for their pedigree golden retrievers to fetch. For Christmas, they retold their tales of crazy, filthy, overcrowded Manhattan while clutching giant cups of hot cocoa and apple sider in front of electric fireplaces, and waiting for the contributions of cash. In the summer, they’d allow their parents to pay their airfare for the pleasure of their company in the Caribbean or the Riviera.

I, on the other hand, would remain stuck in the Bronx.

(Well. It was either that, or going to visit my obese stepfather and endure his interrogations about what I was planning to do with my art school education, for which he was NOT paying.)

So, for the last two years of grad school, I stuck around on the Island. And whatever happy lives my classmates were deservingly pursuing elsewhere, I still thought I had it the best: I was free and young, in New York Fuckin’ City! Unthought of, for my long removed Russian family!

In those days, it was between me and the Island. Just the two of us. Finally, I would have the time and discipline to follow the schedule of free admission nights to all Manhattan museums. With no shame, I would join the other tourists waiting for discounted Broadway tickets at the Ticketmaster booth in Times Square. In the summer, I would gladly camp out in Central Park over night, so that I could get a glimpse of some Hollywood star giving Shakespeare a shot at the Delacorte. I read — any bloody book I wanted! — at the Central Branch, then blacken my fingers with the latest issue of Village Voice, while nearly straddling one of the lions up front. And in between my still happening shitty jobs, I would work on my tan on the Sheep Meadow; then peel on my uniform (still reeking of the previous night’s baskets of fries) and return for my graveyard shift in the Bronx.

Yes, it was MY time: to be young and oblivious to the hedonistic comforts of life. I was in the midst of a giant adventure — that forty five grand could buy me — and outside of my curiosity, all the other pleasures of life could wait.

“Now, what are you planning to do with your art school education, hon?” one of my former undergrad professors asked me during an impromptu date.

Snide! Ever so snide, he had a talent for making you feel not up to par — ever! If he were to try that on me today, I would flaunt my post-therapy terminology on boundaries and self-esteem. But back then, I was eating lunches inside the bathroom stalls of my Theatre Arts Building and wearing a button name tag for work, at nighttime. So, I would endure the condescending interrogations over a cup of some bullshit organic soup he’d insist I ordered — and for which I would pray he would offer to pay later, as well.

“Well. I guess you could always teach,” he’d say while packing up to leave for his rent-controlled apartment on the Upper East Side. (Whom did he have to fuck in order to live there for the last two decades?)

He had a point though: New York didn’t need another girl with her romantic dreams of love and starlet success. New York — could do just fine without me.

But still: It was MY time! MY youth in the city! His — was long gone, and I supposed it was reason enough to despise me.

But how ever unrealistic were my pursuits — and how ever hard was the survival — I still had plenty of curiosity in me to give it all a fair try.

I’m pretty sure I was just dreaming, redefining my stories in my resting state. Redefining memories of my family, understanding the departures of those who were supposed to stand in — for my loves. Remembering, memorizing, redefining my journeys. Maybe it was a bump in the road or my road partner’s drumming on the steering wheel, but I wake up.

“Ventura?” I recognize it immediately.

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye: “Yep.”

Seaward.

The Ocean over his shoulder is blending with the sky. The glorious giant is calm today. In shallow spots, it shimmers with emeralds. A single pier jots out. At the end of it, there sits a seafood joint that emits the smell of overcooked frying oil. I wonder if it can be smelled under the pier, where flocks of homeless teenagers and aging hippies reconvene before the rain.

There is that white metal bridge of the railroad that runs through the town and always hums throughout the night instead of the roaring Ocean. I should take a train up here, sometimes, for an adventure. The traffic of LA has been long surpassed, but the cluster fuck of that two-lane Santa Barbara stretch is coming up, right around the bend.

Yep, here we go: The perfectly manicured golf courses to the right of me and the Spanish villas flocking the greenery of the mountains gives away the higher expectations of the locals on their standards of living. Time moves slower here, more obediently. That’s one of the biggest expectations that money can buy.

Where to?

Northward. Forward.

Past Seaward.

After a few more miles north, we hit the land of ranches. Brown wooden signs with names of farms and modest advertisements for their produce begin to mark our mileage. The mountains seem more arid here, yet somehow the land seems more prosperous. After the yet another dry summer, the greenery is starting to come back. It will never look like the East Coast out here. But neither will my adventures be the same.

I keep on moving, dreaming, redefining. I draw up maps of future trajectories, but even I know better: That when it comes to dreams, I’ve gotta roll with it.

A few more miles up and the wondering cattle starts to punctuate the more even greenery. They are like commas in black ink. The ellipses. The horses here are more red, and they match the clay colored rocks protruding in between the green.

Were we to take the 1 Northward, the terrain would have been much prettier. But the 101 is slightly more efficient. Besides, if offers up a thrill of weaving in between the mountains, where the eye can easily miss all signs of rising elevation, but the ears can’t help it and plug up. I get that same sensation when taking off in steel birds from the giant airports of Moscow, San Francisco and New York. In those moments, whereI’ve come from seems to give room to where I’m heading. And I continue to redefine the journey.

Lompoc comes and stays behind. I’ve once leapt out of a steel bird here; and the fear of falling did not get to live in me, for long. After enough falls, it would become a way of being. Free falling was just another form of flying.

Which way?

Not downward, but onward.

Onward and free.

In fifty more miles, we reach the vineyards. They cling to the sides of these heels like patches of cotton upon a corduroy or velvet jacket with thinning material on its elbow. Some patches are golden. They look harvested and ready to retire. Others are garnet red and brown. Above the ones that are bright green I notice thin hairs of silver tinsel in the air.

“Is that to ward off the birds?” I ask my road partner.

He answers indirectly: “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

And it is.

It is quite beautiful up here, and I am tempted to pull off the road and temporarily forget about my general direction. Perhaps, it matters little: As to where I’m heading and how fast. But the way (as in the manner, and my manner is always grateful) must make the only difference in the end.

Oh, so it’s gonna be one of those: A slowly crawling, rainy day best spent under the covers, with a book, after a rare discovery that today, you have absolutely nowhere to be.

You’ve gotta earn a day like that. There is always too much work; work that often works you — not the other way around. The work of Gotta. The work of Must. The work that should not be rescheduled: It could be delayed — but it’s gonna cost cha. So, it’s always best to deal with the work now, for it might go away if you don’t. People have choices, around here. They might take their business elsewhere. So, you say yes — and take the work.

I wish I knew it to be different, somewhere else in the world. But I didn’t start working until I landed here: In the Land of Work. Some call it “Opportunity”. Sure, it is. The possibility of that opportunity tests the desire and sometimes pushes the limits of your capability. But If you seize the opportunity, it becomes: More work. The work of Should. The work of Must.

Perhaps, it’s more desirable work — work you wouldn’t mind doing for free. Ask any artist: an undercover poet or the girl musician with purple hair that works in the front of your office as a receptionist (but mostly, she makes your coffee and keep unjamming the copy machine). Ask a cashier at a framing store or the teenager with dreamy eyes that bags your groceries at Trader Joe’s. Ask anyone from the army of these tired kids working night shifts at your restaurants: They know the drudgery of free work all to well.

Some may still have enough gratitude to go around. If fuels them to keep showing up after a day spent chasing the work. There is enough passion in them still — to find the reasons to peel on their hideous uniforms every day, right around three or four, when most people start watching the clock for the minute to call it quits. But the tired kids report to work in which they rarely believe — but which they absolutely must accept until another “opportunity”, for work.

I know one. I study her bounce around the narrow sushi joint I frequent weekly. Every night, and sometimes during the weekend brunch, I can see her doing the work.

(Ugh, “brunch”! If you’ve ever waited tables in Manhattan, for the rest of your life, there is no more dreaded word in your vocabulary. It’s enough to lose your appetite for “brunches”.)

She’s got a regular name. It’s sorta pretty, but I always forget it, and I want to call her Clementine, or Chloe, or Josephine. She is perky, quick and funny, always ready for some improv with a willing customer. When she appears at a booth, she tends to find a nook into which she fits her soft places like a kitten agreeing to your caress. But you better know how to touch her: A slight degree of nervousness or clumsy inexperience — and she bounces off, while waiving the tail of her gathered hair as a woman used to being watched every time she walks away.

“You want — the salads? Is that safe to say?”

I know for certain that just a register away, therein lies her bitchiness. She is too tired from the work to tippy toe around me, for her tips. And I bet she can tear into a man with eloquence and composure even grown women don’t have the courage to possess . But she is always nice to me, at first; until she remembers my routine — and she begins to flirt.

“Are you an actress?” I hear the booth filled with older men ask her.

They look like they work in production: There is a certain air of exhaustion, long hours, terrible diet and lack of exercise that I can smell on them. There is always too much work, for these guys; so much of it, most end up childless or divorced. They are this city’s doctors: Always on call. Always ready to take the work. Because if they don’t, the work might go away. So, they say yes.

Clementine says yes. But she shifts, from one foot to another. The lines of her curves change in a warning that she may let ‘em have it, in case of their commentary about the work she doesn’t mind doing for free. But thankfully, the men know better than to ask her the civilian cliches of: “How is that going for you?” or “Have I seen you in anything?”

They do know better; for they have sacrificed their forming years on putting in the union hours — sometimes, for free — in a dangerous bet that the work would pay off later.

But the work may not have happened later. The “opportunity” had to be seized right then. So: They said yes.

Now, newly and happily married, or unhappily divorced, they still find themselves chasing the work. And in the midst of their private miseries, they chase the fantasy of Chloe’s possibility. Like me, they find her youth titillating. But it is her fire — that formed in her pursuit of the work — that makes them hope she would stay by their table just a little bit longer.

But Josephine must go: She must go do the work. She has to earn herself the “opportunity” to do her other work, for free. And she has to work enough to earn herself one of these:

A slow, crawling, rainy day best spent under the covers, in a tired body, with a book; after a rare discovery that today, she has absolutely nowhere to be, and that her conscience is finally at rest — from all the work.

There is a spirit, in certain women, that lives so powerfully — it resurrects my own ways.

I have loved many of such women, in my life: They are essential to my every breath.

And they always have a special talent for obeying the time clock to my own destiny, whose ticking I often fail to understand. Still, I seek them, by intuition — whenever in need of inspiration (or, of just a confirmation, really, that I am still getting it all right).

Sometimes, they reappear whenever I have a reason to celebrate. But only in the most dire of my moments, do they seem to unite, unanimously, and come to the forefront of my days as a magnificent army of undefeatable souls.

There is a woman with her hair on fire: She lives at a halfway point between the two coasts of my identify. At any given time of every day, she is an expert at whipping up a meal soon after making love; and as her lovers, we make for one doomed lot because she will not happen to any of us, again.

Instead of breakfast, she begins each day with a party. At a round table of her restaurant, she often shares a drink with her clients and her staff, late into the night. She drives fast and laughs for so long, the windows begin to rattle like an orchestra of chimes. Her fire-engine red lips are never smeared. And god forbid, she tames her hair into anything more modest.

“When in doubt — be generous,” she says. “Generous and kind.” Nothing has disobeyed her love. And no one — can overcome the kindness.

She is all that: magnificent, magnanimous, braver than the rest and always in the heart of every love.

To each — her own way.

An erudite poetess with African hair sends me postcards every once in a while, from the Mediterranean coast where she retreats to rest her skin from the abrasive gazes her beauty attracts. From a writers’ colony, with wooden cots and tables by the window, she writes to me in stanzas.

“At work,” she’ll say.

And she will mean: RESPECT.

In her profession, I have known no equals; and in the written word, she is much further than me: always ahead, as it testing the ground that I am meant to follow. She is political, on edge, and often absolute. She is a socialist in success: Others, she believes, must benefit.

Her people: They have suffered way too much. And so, she prowls, proudly: paving the way, pounding the ground. And it is worth the awe to see her never skips a step or stumbles.

“TO NEVER APOLOGIZE,” — she has tattooed upon her forehead (and she scribble that on mine).

In stanzas! She often writes to me — in stanzas, even when writing about the most mundane, like laundry or her lover’s breathing. And I watch her, moving through the world of men with a grace that is so undeniably female.

To each — her own way. To each — her own manner.

The woman that shadows all of my most difficult choices with patience worthy of saint: She has been bound to me by some unwritten, never negotiated rule of sisterhood. With her, I’m never orphaned. With her, I’m never-ever afraid; and life — is not unjust. She is the kindest one I’ve known. The worthiest — that I have ever loved.

It’s not that she hasn’t witnessed others error. No doubt, she has seen me lose my own ways, as well.

“Don’t you ever question?” I used to challenge her, in my youthful disobedience.

“Question?”

“I dunno. Question the purpose? The faith? The validity of it all?”

At every significant marker of each year, “God bless you,” she jots down, with a steady hand. From her lips — and from her hand — these words never acquire comedy or scorn. To speak the truth. To call each thing by its own name. She’s fine with that. But the cost — alas, the cost — she never loses the sight of human cost.

Once, long ago, her hand had gotten lost in my growing out mane. She had a mother’s touch. With her, I’m never orphaned.

“Remember this!” I thought to myself, but all too soon, I drifted off to sleep.

Yes, it’s a hard way of being: Living as an artist. But then, again, I wouldn’t want to be living — in any other way.

And I’ve tried. In all honesty, I’ve tried to be many things: Anything else but an artist. An administrator, a teaching assistant, and a secretary. A proofreader, an academic, a critic. A manager. An accountant. A librarian.

They had known me for years, and for years — they had seen me working. They had watched me giving a very fair try to living for the sake of a different profession. A “normal” profession. A job. And they had witnessed me change my mind.

Back then, I wasn’t really sure which profession it would turn out to be, so I would try everything. And instead of entertaining things, I would satisfy my curiosity by leaping into every opportunity. Because I always felt I could be so many things; but I wanted to make sure that I couldn’t be anything else — but an artist.

Being an artist resembled an exotic disease — a dis-ease of the soul — and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t one of its victim.

“So, what’s your major this morning?” my folks teased me during our phone calls. I was prone to changing my mind, and the flexibility of my American education confused the hell out of them.

“Well, at least, you’re getting an education,” my best friend comforted me. She always comforted me. And it seemed to bother her the least — my proneness to change my mind, because I felt I could be so many things.

Come to think of it: It should have been easier, in my youth. During our college years, that’s exactly what we were meant to do: To seek. To learn. To experiment. To be — so many things!

But somehow, my contemporaries seemed to be more certain about their paths. They would be teachers or administrators. The more city-savvy types were going into investment banking in New York. And I’ve even known one biologist and a chick who went to work for Fox News. But mostly, they would be teachers.

“How can they be so sure?” I wondered.

Because I wasn’t sure. I could foresee the pleasure in having a day job with which I could identify myself for a couple of years; but the romance of its routine would expire as soon as some bureaucrat’s ego would begin dictating procedures to me, on a daily basis. Some of them didn’t like my language, or my dress code. They handed me time sheets and forms, along with the lists of appropriate jewelry. Some wanted me to tame my hair. Others preferred I didn’t call my colleagues “Loves”.

So, I would leave. I would always leave, but with enough notice and plenty of disappointment noticeable on my employers’ faces:

“It’s just that you had so much potential!” they would say.

“Then, why did you break my balls about my headscarves?” I would think in response. Still, I would leave with grace (even if I was leaving over burning bridges).

After college, I would be the only one in my class to leave for an art school.

Everyone had an opinion. Everyone but me. I still felt I could be so many things, but I really wanted to be — just one!

Some seemed to be quite disappointed in my decision to stick to the arts.

“What are you gonna do — with an art degree? You could be so many things, instead!”

And I wasn’t sure. I still wasn’t sure.

“And how can everybody else — be so sure?!” I wondered.

After the first semester in my MFA program, the uncertainty about my profession would remain. However, the overall vision of my life was becoming clearer: I would be an artist. I WAS an artist. And it was starting to be enough — to be that one thing.

And so, there I was: Willing to risk my life’s stability — the stability about which my contemporaries seemed to be so sure — for the sake of seeking daily inspiration. I would take on projects that would fuel my gratitude and curiosity. I would begin spending my nights in companies of others who shared my exotic disease — the dis-ease of the soul; and I would attend their shows and poetry readings, and loom in front of their paintings in tiny New York galleries. And none of us were still certain about our destinations; and yes, we were still filled with angst. But we did share the same vision: Our moments of happiness were simultaneous to the moments of creation — the moments of dis-ease.

Throughout the years, some of my contemporaries have disappeared into their professions: They turned out to be successful administrators and great teachers. Wonderful teachers, as a matter of fact! I would watch them moving with seeming certainty through their honorable daily routines.

“Still: How can you be so sure?” I would interview a few of them, years later.

I had succumbed to my disease fully by then, and I would learn to maneuver the demands of my survival jobs. I had surrendered.

“Are you kidding?! We aren’t sure at all!” some would answer, honestly.

And for the first time, in their tired and good, decent and honorable faces, I would notice a slight glimmer of doubt.

“Oh!” I would wonder. “So, no one really knows, for sure!”

Strangely, I would find no comfort in their doubtfulness.

But I would find great ease in knowing that I myself had fully surrendered to my disease: The dis-ease of my soul — of an artist.

Nothing, as in: I wake up late due to the afternoon sun blazing through my window. (The shades are helpless against this blazing.) I wake up to sunlight, and not to the monotonous tune of my alarm clock. I wake up to another day. (I’m helpless against waking.)

And when I do wake up, I stay in bed, despite the habitual bounce of my thoughts about the stuff that needs to get done. It’ll get done. Eventually. So, I stay in bed, reading.

The more fragmented my schedule, the lesser are the chances of my reading a book, these days. A whole book: Not a book of vignettes by a Parisian melancholic, or of poetry by an angry American alcoholic. A book, a long novel, or an epic story hasn’t rested in my palms in a long time. I still read though — but of course! — in between the fragments of my day. But I never read in bed.

But today: I do. Because I’m doing — nothing.

Yes, I’m doing nothing:

Nothing, as in: I take a scorching hot shower with a bar of handmade soap with tea tree oil and oats. It smells like the pine tree bathhouses that my people would heat up for each other, late at night — before a generous dinner but after the hard work — and they would come out with red and calm faces of innocence, long ago traded in for survival.

I take the first sip of my black coffee: I’m feeling peckish, I must say. I haven’t eaten the first meal of the day, and I’m about to skip the second. But there is no way I’m cooking today: Because I’m doing — nothing.

Nothing, as in: I walk to the farmers’ market. I do not drive. Instead, I accompany my kind man who tells me the fables from his previous day. His long stories. As we walk, we study the neighborhood: The homes that sit at an architectural intersection of San Francisco and Venice Beach. Homes with abandoned toys in their play pins and enviable tree houses decorated with Chinese lanterns. Homes with old vintage cars in their gravel covered driveways and disarrayed trash bins at the curb. Homes I’ve promised to build for my people — my kind people — and my child.

I watch an older couple approaching us: I wonder what I would look like, when I’m older. And I shall be older, certainly. The romantic notion that I would die young has expired with forgiveness.

And now: I want to live, in perseverance and stubborn generosity; and every day, I want to start with a clean slate on the board of my compassion.

What time is it? I have no clue. I do not own a watch and my cellphone has been off since the very early hours of this morning, when I was just getting to be bed after a night of seeing old friends and playing cards until we began to feel drunk from exhaustion.

I think of them — my friends, my kind people, my kind man — as I walk, and I can see the white tents the hippies and the hopefuls have pitched behind a plastic barricade. They’re all so specific, I get inspired to see them in a book:A long novel about perseverance and stubborn generosity; an epic story in which its heroine travels toward her forgiveness.

“When you forgive — you love.”

Someone else has written that in a romantic story about dying young. I don’t want to do that: I want to live.

Yes, I want to live.

We purchase things that only speak to our taste buds: Black grapes and persimmons. Sun-dried tomato pesto and horseradish hummus. Sweet white corn and purple peppers. I watch a tiny curly creature with my baby-fat face and a unibrow dancing around her mother’s bicycle, in a pink tutu and leopard uggs. I look away when she tickles my eyes with tears only to find a brown face, even tinier, resting over a sari-draped shoulder of her East Indian mother. Live, my darling child. I want you — to live.

My kind comrade and I walk over to the handmade soap store: I want more smells of home. We both notice her: She is African and tall — PROUD — with dreadlocks and a pair of bohemian overalls. How could you not notice her: Her face belongs to a heroine traveling toward her own forgiveness.

“Are you doing okay?” a very gentle gentleman asks us from behind the counter.

I smile into the jar of eucalyptus body butter and nod: Zen.

“How could they not be okay, here?” the heroine making a rest stop on her journey toward forgiveness says.

We laugh. All four faces in this store are calm. They are calm with innocence long traded-in for survival. But then again, maybe it’s just compassion. (And I’m helpless — against it.)

“I was riding my motorcycle this morning,” my proud heroine starts telling us a fable from her previous day. Her long story.

At the end of it, we would laugh. Not wanting anything from each other, but having so much to give back, we laugh with lightness.

We laugh — with nothingness, in a Kundera sorta way.

I think: We are no longer innocent. But that’s quite alright, I think.

Because with enough forgiveness, compassion often takes its place. Compassion takes the place of innocence. And that’s quite alright, I think. And I want to live — a life of that.

There is a passion, in all of us. It boils. It protests: In Rome*, Yemen, Africa**. It pushes to break us out of our skins — out of our boundaries; shackles, limits, laws; cowardice — and to rebel.

Some have chosen to live quietly, getting by. They seem to cause the least conflict. And if on occasion they hurt one another — it will be most likely by accident. A tiny demand will rise in their souls — a tiny rebellion against obedience that has seemingly earned them nothing.

“So, what’s the fucking point?!” I ask.

And they reach for something that the rest of the world won’t miss much. They reach with passion. There may be an accidental victim: He’s gotten in the way of their reaching.

But what’s a little hurt — against a lifetime of groveling?

Nothing.

Others manages to tangle up their egos in the chalk lines of the score board that keeps track of the rat race. They are a special clan: They measure life in numbers. In things. In values. Passionately. To them, there always seems to be a deadline in life, called Work Until:

Work Until: They get tired of playing. Work Until: They gain a debt, then pay it off. Work Until: They have a piece of land, for a house or a deathbed. Until they pay off a palace, a chariot, a marriage, a child’s tuition: A Happily Ever After.

Work Until: They never need to work again. Work Until: They can rest. Work Until…

Nothing.

Their days turn into discardable minutes: Five minutes — Until. Thirty years — Until. Another person’s life — Until. Until, Until, Until, Until. They pump themselves up against the lackluster crawl of the minutes. They lose themselves — in things, in numbers. In scores. With passion.

Some actually manage to get there: God bless ‘em! They get to their anticipated Until, for the sake of which, they’ve sacrificed so many minutes. And some have even sacrificed their truths. Their passions.

That’s when the real horror happens: At the end, they soon discover that nothing, in life, lacks a price.

Nothing.

And they find that the price of Until usually turns out to be gastronomical: Greed. Sacrifice. Health. Denial. Nothing.

And that shit isn’t refundable!

“So, what’s the fucking point?!” I ask.

And:

What happens to LOVE — I ask — in such a lifetime of Until?

Find me a man who knows the answer to that. For I have asked too many men who’ve given me mere accusations in return. Something about time, or timing. Readiness and plans. Something about their Until. I couldn’t really stick around for their explanations for long: Their fear was eating up their faces — and my time. So, find me a man who knows the answer to: What’s the fucking point?! I find me one who answers with passion.

Oh, and don’t discount those poor suckers born with extremely sensitive souls.

But what happens when they don’t? Well, then: Please, say a prayer for those poor suckers: A Hail Mary for the Sensitives. For they are stuck here, among us, with no delusion to save them from the ache. And no Until.

“Oh, but everyone aches!” the others object.

Still, the sensitives get the worse of it, in this life. They stumble around, among us, like unwanted orphans. Like innocents.

“But do YOU ache?” they ask.

Poor suckers! They insist on hitting the truth on the nail. It’s so annoying!

“Everyone aches,” the others object.

The sensitives study our faces for signs that they aren’t the only ones feeling this much. It’s innocence, at its worst. It’s passion.

“Then, what do you do — to cope?” they ask.

“Nothing.”

So, they devote their lifetimes to taking notes. They write down our words, then regurgitate them, in a prettier form: Poetry. Others jot down their sketches, finding beauty in our fear-eaten faces. And innocence, or whatever is left of it. Passion. Some put on reenactments:

“Wouldn’t this make for a better picture, in life?” they ask.

The others scoff, look away.

They do not have the time for truth — Until…

They do not have time — for a revolution.

No: They would rather spend their lives suspended until the arrival of Until. Or, they spend their lifetimes — groveling.

Surely, there will be small griefs that happen until the Until, and they’ll complain and demand attention. They’ll demand a change, but only enough of it — and only if it’s convenient — and never for the sake of others.

Because everyone aches. And there is nothing to be done about that.

Nothing.

But what would happen if we gathered our passions into a fist and planted a punch?